Tag: Fantasy

Carlos, A Dying Dream by Justin Meckes

Sean opened his eyes and found himself seated at a table adorned with a single calla lily, which stood erect in a slender glass vase. Beside him was an otherworldly bright and shining cobblestone street. If it wasn’t for the dazzling shine, Sean might have believed he was in Paris. Then again, there was the pungent odor of garlic, tomatoes, and freshly baked bread, which made him think he might be in Rome. Sean also noticed the hint of a floral perfume wafting through the air. Thie scent was not coming from the white flower in the table’s centerpiece, so he turned his attention to a dark-haired woman behind him.

Her cheekbones were high and modelesque. She was wearing dark sunglasses, perhaps because of the ethereal radiance being emitted by the adjacent roadway. Staring into a compact, the woman methodically applied a bright red lipstick. When she noticed Sean, she closed the case and smiled before crossing her long legs and picking up her menu.

Across the Threshold by Sumbul Shahin

The door was locked. Of course, it was. It would have been a disappointment if we could waltz right in. After all, we had spent centuries on our quest for this door. Our entire conscious lives dedicated to this very moment.

We stood spellbound for a few moments, watching the fluid motion of the carvings on the ancient steel door. The serpent dancing around the lock shimmered its warning. The carvings of men and women in love and in combat glittered and shone. They were enacting stories as old as time. They were also offering hints to the combination of pictograms which would open the door. Adam and I turned to look at each other. Now that we were so close, all our doubts had resurfaced.

Storm by Aldas Kruminis

During the stormy night under the starless heavens, thunder and lighting reigned the sky. Bolts of violent light blasted through the heaven like the raptures of human veins. Stiff uprooted trees lay dead in the trembling grass, frail huts shivered at the sound of the cracking fury and the living buried themselves from the rage. This was the night when Gods cracked their whips at the sins of men and the winds, full of evil, haunted the scattered villages. It was a violent and tempestuous night, ordered to conceal the secret birth.

The World-Spanning Dreams by C.J. Dotson

The punishment for minor infractions during Athary’s twice-yearly voyage was to spend a night confined to the smallest wooden lifeboat, being towed on a line let far, far out behind the armor-bottomed ship. With the Great Serpents in the depths, visible by day as a mass of shifting shadow and by night as a writhing bioluminescence, most people feared a night in the rowboat.

“Feels like being bait on a hook,” Ponna, one of the girls in Athary’s year, said. Her face was green and her voice faint.

All that after enduring a night in the boat only one time, Athary thought with scorn.